Associate Professor Francois Viruly
Francois Viruly is a property economist with over twenty years of experience in advising public as well as private entities. His research interests are in the fields of Urban Land Economics, Property Finance and Portfolio Management. He held the position of Chief Economist at the Chamber of Mines, Acting Head of Department in the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand and in 2011 was appointed as Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is a regular industry speaker, and delivers courses for the South African Property Owner’s Association (SAPOA). He is a past president of the African Real Estate Society and is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyor’s (RICS). He has recently been appointed onto the RICS Sub-Saharan Africa Market Advisory Panel.
Associate Professor Kathy Michell
Kathy Michell is a quantity surveyor and facilities manager and has been on the full time academic staff at the University of Cape Town since 1995. She has a masters degree in cost engineering from the University of Cape Town and a doctorate in urban facilities management from the University of Salford.
In addition, she lectures and co-supervises at the masters level on strategic asset and facilities management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and assists the Centre for Higher Education Research Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University in facilitating the Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision course at Universities in South Africa. Her research focus is in corporate real estate and urban development and management.
She serves on the editorial board and is the regional editor (Africa) for the Journal of Facilities Management. She is the current President of the South African Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession and serves as a Council Member on the Council for the Built Environment.Dr Saul Nurick
Saul Nurick teaches on the Property Studies program at the University Cape Town's Department of Construction Economics and Management. He teaches Property Financial Mathematics, Property Feasibility Analysis and Property Finance to Undergraduate Property Studies students. He holds a BCom, BSc(Hons) (Property Studies) and MPhil degrees from the University of Cape Town, and a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is also registered as a Chartered Surveyor with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). His research interests focus on sustainability, green building, and how these relate to various property stakeholders.
Dr Frank Ametefe
Frank Kwakutse Ametefe is a Senior Lecturer in Property Studies in the Department of Construction Economics and Management, University of Cape Town. He has broad research interests in the areas of real estate investment, finance and economics. Frank has undertaken several consultancy projects for the Investment Property Fund (IPF) in the United Kingdom, among other organisations.
Frank completed a PhD in Real Estate Finance at the University of Reading, UK. Before this, he studied for an MPhil in Finance at the University of Ghana. His MPhil thesis was focused on how access to the capital market helps improve the ability of Ghanaian banks to support the housing and construction industry and how housing and construction finance, in turn, impacts the performance (risk and profitability) of these banks. His PhD research re-examined the portfolio role of real estate in light of the changing landscape of pension sectors across the globe, specifically the shift from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution structures.
Frank has published in several high impact journals and was awarded the Nick Tyrrell Research Prize in 2018 for his work on the optimal composition of hybrid/blended real estate portfolios. The Award was established in 2011 by three real estate bodies in Europe (IPF, INREV and SPR) to acknowledge innovative and high quality applied research in real estate investment. Other awards Frank has received include the American Real Estate Society Doctoral Fellowship (2014), Best Real Estate and Planning Poster Prize (2014), the Reading Real Estate Foundation Award (2013) and the University of Ghana Fellowship Award (2009).
Dr Louie Van Schalkwyk
Louie van Schalkwyk is a senior lecturer in Property Law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of Cape Town. She holds LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and a PhD (Law) degree from the University of Cape Town. She in an admitted attorney, notary public and conveyancer of the High Court of South Africa with seven years of experience in property conveyancing and notarial practice. Furthermore, she is a research fellow at the SARChI Research Chair: Mineral Law in Africa, hosted at the Law Faculty of the University of Cape Town. Her current research interest include property law and mining law and, in particular the relationship between land use planning and mining and the role of cooperative government in this context.